


The Human Condition

by thestrangehistorian



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Ancient History, Gen, Historical Hetalia, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, MORE NATIONS TO BE ADDED, Mesopotamia, Origin Myths, Origin Story, Vignette, anyway i'm having a lot of fun doing research for this piece and just wanted to share, so hi i have absolutely no self-control whatsoever apparently, we'll get there when we get there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 02:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15185156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestrangehistorian/pseuds/thestrangehistorian
Summary: Six thousand years ago, a group of priests ascended the steps of the ziggurat and called down a god.(This is the story of humankind and the things that they build.)





	The Human Condition

_**The Cradle to the Grave**_  
4,500 BC

_"[nam]-lugal an-ta èd-dè-a-ba_  
_[eri]duki nam-lugal-la"_

_“When kingship from heaven was lowered,_  
_the kingship was in Eridu.”_

  
In the city of Eridu, the priests came together in the ziggurat and called down a god. 

It was a hot, sunny day. The sun burned bright over their heads as they ascended the steps, carrying their offerings, and the tablets inscribed with words to appease the goddess. For hours in the dry, stale heat, they sang and lamented and prayed to the clear skies, begging. 

When the ceremony ended and the last words died on their tongues, a gentle breeze washed over them and the night fell cool. 

Storms came down over the city, powerful, earthshaking storms.

Seven days later, a child ascended the ziggurat’s steps and spoke to the priests. 

He was called “Enki,” and he was the first of his kind.

* * *

Enki was the mischievous and inventive sort of child, the child that parents regarded with equal parts pride and despair. He was forever running off into the city streets, paying too much for food and drink, bringing back pottery pieces to decorate his steadily overflowing rooms. The only way they could get him to sit still was when they asked him to write. He took to the tablets like a fish to water, and soon enough the priests were wondering what they were supposed to do with all his words - the poems, the accounts of his day, his ideas for changes to the city.

There were kings in Eridu, but the priests commanded the city in a way that they never could. It was their faith which had birthed Enki and he was far too precious to be entrusted to anyone else. No amount of squabbling between the cities and states of the region would change that simple fact. 

For Enki, it was not so important. He couldn’t understand why the stuffy old men wouldn’t permit him to wander freely. Enki found the city fascinating. He liked to play with the children his own age, and to sit with the farmers who came in on market days, or the fishermen with the river’s yield. The river was a fierce and powerful thing, and Enki loved that most of all. He loved to sit on the banks, watching the power of the currents. He loved the storms that rumbled overhead, shaking the temples. The priests said that the gods were angry; Enki was not sure he agreed. When the rain hit his skin and he turned his face up to the wind, Enki felt like the king of everything. 

Eventually, Enki grew bored of his priests. He spotted the blacksmith in his shop, forging bronze and copper. He decided that he wished to do the same, and traveled to the city of Badtibra, where he became an apprentice. When he grew bored of this, he went to Larsa, and then Sippar, and then Shuruppak. He learned to spin clay, to play the lute, to till earth, to swing a sword and throw a spear, to calculate sums and track the stars, to heal minor wounds and make medicines.

Enki grew slowly compared to other children. By the time he was a man grown, generations had passed him by. In some ways, he counted this a blessing. He treasured the attentions and company of women in every city he visited, and feasted with kings and merchants of all sorts. Enki stood tall and handsome, like his namesake, whose likeness was carved into so many temple walls. But now when Enki saw those images - when he thought about the reflection of his face in the river - he wondered if he truly was a god, or if he was only a very strange man after all.

And then one day, the river overflowed.

* * *

Enki did not fear water, not before and not after. But he was wary now, cautious in a way that he hadn’t used to be. He came to the city of Kish, where the king accepted him. He went back to his life as before but found that he had lost his childish innocence. Though the rain still had power to wash him clean and make him feel new, he did not relish the crack of thunder or the roar of the current as he had before. He concerned himself more with the governing of his territory - and of the wide, wide world that seemed to exist outside of it.

For there were others now, like him. Strange and foreign creatures they were, from foreign lands. They emerged from the rivers and the seas, called down in temples by their own priests. Humanity was forgetting itself already. One morning, Enki ran his fingers through his heavy black hair and came away with silver threaded in his fingertips.

Enki had his own children in time. Some were begotten on women, and they grew old and died in their time. Still, others still came up the steps of the ziggurat to claim the descent of the gods. Enki taught them to write and to speak and to sing, as the priests had taught him so long ago. Some of them went out into the wide, wide world to stake their claims on uncharted lands. His calloused hands stiffened and gnarled with age; his back began to bend.

At first, Enki was afraid and angry. The gods had forsaken him, robbing him of his precious life too soon, too soon. He was consumed with pity vast as an ocean - how could it be that humans died happy when they had so little time? Thousands of years were all too short. Enki grew frailer and frailer, but he did not want to stop working. He strove for more and more - there was so much life on this earth, and he wanted to see everything. Children were being born at this very moment who would shape the future of all things.

One night, Enki dreamed of a strange woman in strange clothes. She had deep brown skin and very long braided hair, and she smiled at him with bright golden eyes. 

“My friend,” she greeted him, in a language which Enki did not know but understood all the same. “I am called Ananta in my mother tongue. We did not have the chance to meet in life, but I have been waiting for you.”

“Where have you come from?” Enki asked, bewildered. The dream was dark and misty, so unlike his ordinary dreams. There seemed to be no sun, and when Enki made to approach Ananta, she seemed to be farther and father away.

“Not yet,” she told Enki gently. “It is not your time. You and I are the same, you see. Only I have already passed on my legacy to another. My great cities lay abandoned and my people have moved on.”

“You are younger than me,” Enki noted, eyeing her unlined face and hands. “How is it possible?”

“The hand of fate is a mystery,” said Ananta, shrugging and adjusting her shawl. “But perhaps there may be life still, beyond this one.”

“The land of the dead?”

“The land of the gods,” Ananta corrected. “Or perhaps, you are right. I do not know myself. I am afraid to travel alone - I was not like you.”

“You really have been watching me,” Enki muttered, uncertain of how to feel. He did not want to show weakness in front of this beautiful woman. He straightened up as best he could and spoke a challenge, “And what if I find some other beautiful woman to guide me to my next life? Hmm? Will you hate me if I decide that I must continue living?”

“I do not think it is so simple,” said Ananta with a knowing smile. “But I am content to wait.”

She took one hand and brushed his cheek in a gesture of comfort.

“Your legacy is safe,” she promised him. “But still, take what time you need. This is not a lesson I can teach you, but one you must learn on your own. I will be here, when you are through.”

When Enki woke, there were tears on his face, and he did not know why.

* * *

One day, an army appeared at the gates of the city. 

A young man ascended the ziggurat with his blade in hand.

Enki was relieved. He was already starting to wrinkle, and had never quite lost his vanity. His new looks did not appeal to him.

“Father,” said Anshar, who was now called Akkad. “I have come to claim my legacy.”

He raised a blade’s point to his father’s chin. 

Enki only laughed.

“My dear boy, put that thing away,” he said, putting his fingers against the sharp point. “You are too late if you wish to end me yourself. I have been dying for years.”

Anshar was very young, Enki thought, watching the boy sheath his blade once more with a sheepish expression. No, but he was not a boy anymore. He was tall and strong, anointed by the priests of his own gods, with blood on his hands and gold about his neck and ears. His muscles were strong and noticeable, his eyes keen if not entirely intelligent. Enki saw a strange reflection of himself - not quite the same, of course, but true enough. He had to smile, wondering if Anshar had fathered children yet. For such a young man, he did have a tremendously huge stick up his ass, and such things could make procreation quite difficult.

“What are you smiling at?” Anshar demanded, almost petulantly. “Father, I don’t understand.”

Enki hadn’t understood it at first, either. _Oh, Ananta, you were right._

Lying in this bed, surrounded by the dusty relics of his long, long life - Enki had had quite enough. So what if it was “only” two thousand years? The gods had blessed him with this life - to be the first of his kind. And he had seen so much of this world. He was growing bored again, just as he had in his long-ago youth. It was high time to be moving on.

“You will, someday,” Enki told his son. “Now if you’ll excuse me - it is terribly rude to keep a lady waiting.”

He smiled, and closed his eyes, and opened himself up to the sky. 


End file.
